The resulting storm is known as "SurveyFail"
Sometimes I really hate the TypographicalPractices of the fandom!internet.
I can haz standard orthography. Plz.
The internet phenomenon is known as "InsideJoke".
It's pretty hilarious that he graduated from the BU CNS department but I'm not totally sure I can talk freely about why.
If only a deceased politician happened to share your knowledge.
5: Maybe that's why the politician is deceased.
What the hell is the deal with the Supreme Court decision in the update to the post? What does that stand on? Dahlia Lithwick had a post a few months ago about how ruthlessly cruel this Supreme Court is. On the face of it, this certainly seems needlessly cruel.
7: The Supreme Court says "Go away" to nearly every case that somebody tries to bring before it. That's what they did here.
Whoops, I didn't read the article very closely. What the hell is the reasoning in the federal court, then?
Like the discipline of economics, the Supreme Court is one of the last institutions in society willing to stand up for archaic and nonsensical principles when they are besieged by the sophomoric interests of human beings and basic morality. Truly they are saving us from a mobocracy.
7, 8: Yeah, I'd have to read the case and think about the law -- I don't have a good offhand sense of how First Amendment cases play out -- but there's a lot of room for a possible explanation being "Yes, your high school is run by vicious shitheads, but no, your real grievances aren't the kind that support the cause of action you brought." With this SC, random viciousness resulting in a bad decision is perfectly possible, but it's not the only explanation.
I can't imagine how they stuck the family with the school district's legal costs.
That is weird -- the case doesn't sound frivolous, even if it's dismissible.
I can wholeheartedly condemn the high school, certainly -- the asshole's pleaded guilty to assaulting her and she gets thrown off the cheerleading squad for not cheering for him?
The article seems to be saying that she claimed that forcing her to stick to the approved script was a violation of her right to free speech but the court said no, she is acting as a spokesperson for the school when she is cheering and thus it doesn't apply. That seems not completely unreasonable but you'd think that there would be some law that would prevent this sort of shit from happening.
And how come he hasn't been kicked off the team for committing a violent crime?
16: True. People at my school got kicked off teams just for minor in possession tickets.
While I'm sympathetic to her dilemma, I'm skeptical that high school basketball cheers amount to constitutionally protected speech.
the asshole's pleaded guilty to assaulting her and she gets thrown off the cheerleading squad for not cheering for him?
It's not like he pled guilty to being bad at basketball.
I presume he is a good basketball player. The whole high school sports culture thing in the US is completely pathological, it should just be abolished.
Put it this way: from a protected speech standpoint, would the school be justified for removing her from the squad if every time after the rest of the squad chanted his name, she'd yell "RAPIST! RAPIST!"?
Ok, I'm fine saying everything is fine legally. But how could her school be run by such utter shitheads?
21
Or really anything else. Could she have gotten a restraining order against the guy and gotten him de facto kicked off the team that way?
22: I haven't read the cases -- the decision may actually be a legally bad one. It's just that you can't tell just because what the school did was awful.
Yeah, students at school basically don't have First Amendment rights anyway, even if it weren't for the fact that she was on the cheerleading squad. On the legal question (does a cheerleader have a 1A right to do/say whatever she wants instead of joining the team cheer, and remain on the team?) I'm not shocked that this was found frivolous.
The surrounding facts are so horrible that any decent human being would've thought really hard before sticking her family with the legal fees, but clearly we only got to this point after lots of people failed to act like decent human beings.
If they hadn't pursued a free speech angle, could you make an in loco parentis argument, that the school is being abusive by punishing a student for not cheering in this situation?
On the legal question (does a cheerleader have a 1A right to do/say whatever she wants instead of joining the team cheer, and remain on the team?) I'm not shocked that this was found frivolous.
Pretty sure she doesn't, given that it's a performance; if she was acting in the school play and refused to read the lines she was given, she'd lose her role, and I don't think there's a free speech argument there either.
26: You could make it, I suppose, but I doubt it would fare any better in court.
Generally, I wouldn't sue over something like this, unless I had a whole lot of money to throw away on it and just wanted to make the school miserable. If I had to sue... I might see if there was a way to gin up a sex discrimination claim under Title IX, that punishing her for failing to cheer for her rapist constituted sex discrimination. I'm not sure that flies, but it might.
This might also be the very rare case where intentional infliction of emotional distress is the right cause of action. Mostly, nothing you can think of is bad enough to constitute IIED, but this might make it over the line. I'd have to do the research on it.
The more I think about this the more I wonder how wise it was for the girl to be on the cheerleading team in the first place. I mean, I could imagine a different world in which the coach sat her down after the game and said "Look, I know cheering is important to you, but at the same time it seems like being at all the basketball games where your rapist is geing cheered by the multitudes [even setting aside her obligation to join in] is going to be really painful for you. Maybe you should consider finding a different extracurricular activity" and that would just be a grownup giving good advice. This isn't to condone the way it went down (as far as we understand it), but the real in loco parentis function might've been keeping her off the cheer squad.
30: But there's something so infuriating about that advice, like she ought to accomodate her rapist lest she suffer even more. I honestly think that just not choosing to cheer for him is a decently empowering way for her to proceed.
I'm only a sentence into that article and I want to die from hate.
In other news, Lux Alptraum, one of the lead bloggers at the porn version of Gawker, Fleshbot, is attempting to collect stories and comments from women about why they watch porn, what kind of porn they watch, etc. They're also casting a PSA but I'm not that brave. She's continually running across articles like these, even written by women who claim to watch porn themselves but who describe it like some kind of unrelenting cesspool of misogyny. (I.e., they don't really watch porn.) She's soliciting emails at lux at fleshbot dot com.
30: Huh. You've got a rapist (pleaded guilty to assault, so we're not arguing about the facts other than in detail here) and the girl he attacked, both of whom have high status positions within the school that require them to interact.
I can't really see that it would be good grownup advice for a person in power within the school to suggest to her that she give up her status so that she could avoid him. Might be good grownup advice for an adult outside the school to suggest that she transfer to a different school not run by vicious shitheads, torching the place as she left. But for a coach to tell her to avoid emotional damage by quitting the team? Nah.
Sorry. I didn't realize we were talking about rape. I'll read the thread next time.
The more I think about this the more I wonder how wise it was for the girl guy to be on the cheerleading basketball team in the first place.
Fixed.
33: Are we sure this is real life and not an episode of Glee? It only starts to make sense to me if I'm picturing the cheerleader coach is Sue Sylvester.
You've got a rapist (pleaded guilty to assault, so we're not arguing about the facts
I'm not arguing the facts because they're all very vague in the articles I've seen, but he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sexual assault, not rape. Which doesn't establish that he didn't actually rape her, but.
34: Well, I was hoping there might be interesting discussion about the first article, too.
the real in loco parentis function might would've been keeping her him off the cheer squad basketball team.
The deceased equine, let me beat it. Seriously, he *pled guilty* to a violent assault on another student -- it's not even as if the school could take refuge behind "we can't act based only on an accusation."
I was going to say something along the lines of 31 and 33; instead, I'll just say, "right on."
On preview, also pwned by 35. But I'm adding triple-pwned value!
Here is the opinion from the 5th circuit. At least at that level they pursued more than just the 1st Amendment complaint. (And it looks like the original appeal was for the district court dismissing the complaint for "failure to state a claim" (even after it had been amended)--so I assume that is where the costs part come from.) By my IANAL count there look to be two separate 14th Amendment claims, two 1st Amendment claims and an equal protection claim.
32: What's a PSA? Public Service Announcements don't seem to me to require casting, but I have some strange blind spots.
33, 37, 39: at the time all this happened, as far as I can tell the grand jury had refused to indict the basketball player at all.* That's not to justify the school's response by any means, but it was not actually weighing the cheerleader against a confessed rapist at the time.
*In addition to suing the school on 1st Amendment grounds and a bunch of other stuff, they also sued the D.A. on a 14th Amendment claim, predicated in part on his failure to get an indictment when he brought the case before a mixed-race jury, despite allegedly having suggested that a mixed-race jury would not indict a couple of black kids. Reading barely between the lines of the complaint it looks like things were extremely racially charged (they suggest that all of this was the work of a black city councilman who wanted to protect the rapists). Certainly would not be surprised if this played some role in the school's response (which is emphatically not to suggest the response was appropriate).
"mixed-race jury" s/b "mixed-race grand jury".
42: Yes, reading some other articles, this whole thing seems to have been racially charged. For instance: The Jasper branch of the NAACP is protesting the indictments of two men charged with sexually assaulting a Silsbee High School cheerleader.
And if this is true, Jesus H. Christ: The girl's lawyer says the cheerleaders were supposed to yell, "Two, four, six, eight, ten, come on, Rakheem, put it in."
things were extremely racially charged
And it's Texas, which is as notorious as any state of the 50 for convicting people on less than solid evidence, especially minority defendants. I don't want to come off as defending anybody in this case, because I know so little about it. Still, there's only so much I'll read into a black teenager facing 20 years in Texas prison accepting a plea bargain to a lesser charge that would keep him out of jail, without knowing more.
It is common to customize cheers for an individual athlete?
Huh. This whole case just turned into a giant mess.
The indictment in 44 was from a 2nd grand jury after the first one had failed to indict.
46: Apparently that was the practice when that player went to the free throw line.
45: Fair enough -- certainly, there are enough guilty pleas that are the result of pressure out there that just because he ultimately pleaded guilty to sexual assault isn't absolute proof that anything happened.
But from the school's point of view, they're not required to apply a 'nothing happened unless there's a guilty verdict' standard. They've still got an accusation of rape credible enough that a prosecutor is trying to get an indictment. At that point, the school throwing her off the cheerleading squad for refusing to cheer for him is still grotesque.
50: I don't get it either. The school either wants to win basketball above all else or they really do have it out for that girl. I suppose other reasoning could be possible, but it isn't immediately apparent what that could be.
Yes, there is still something not quite adding up in the attitude of the school. From an SI article:
On Feb. 27, 2009, in a Glee moment with a few real-life Sue Sylvesters, a Tigers cheerleader--one of the popular people--found herself surrounded at halftime of a basketball playoff game. "It was the administrators against me," she recalls. As fans walked by, the cheerleader, dressed in her maroon-and-white uniform, was reduced to tears by a powerful posse: Silsbee superintendent Richard Bain, principal Gaye Lokey and cheerleading coach Sissy McInnis. Voices raised, they issued an ultimatum to the 16-year-old: Cheer for Rakheem Bolton or go home. "It wasn't right," she says.
On OP.1, I enjoyed this paragraph quoted in the wiki article linked by ObWi:
Somewhere around there, people stopped arguing with him and started taking direct action. The academics started complaining to Boston University, the creatives started creating cat macros, the neuroscientists started writing long introductions to neuroscience and the specialists in gender identity just started screaming. (source)
31, 33, 35, etc.:
Yes, absolutely, it is horrifying that the perpetrator is allowed to keep his high-status position, and galling that the victim has to lose hers. I don't mean to suggest any justice in that state of affairs. The advice I proposed took for granted (wrongly, maybe) that the time to get the alleged rapist kicked off the basketball team has passed.
The right thing would be for him not to remain a hero. I am right with you all on that point. It might even be that the best thing for her to do is to take high-profile steps to try to make it so. But I don't think it'd be bad advice for someone to acknolwedge to her that those steps are likely to be painful for her, and suggest that she may want to consider leading her life in a way that isn't calculated to bring her into contact with him all the time.
And to call this "accommodating" him, where the only action I suggest is "don't sign up for an organization dedicated to cheering for him" seems like it might be stretching the point a bit. Again, signing up so that she can use the platform to undermine the group's main message is a strategy; I merely suggest that it may not be for everyone.
And on preview, all that race stuff sure does complicate things.
Ok, the prosecutor fails to get his "ham sandwich" the first time through, which means a major witness was not credible on the stand, stacks a grand jury for a second try, so prosecutor probably under intense pressure to get an indictment. Takes a plea bargain down to a misdemeanor, with no jail time. "Tried for rape, and acquitted due to lack of evidence" is a career killer, no matter the facts.
The NAACP and the School appear to be on the side of this poor black kid. The girl and her family are so intensely litigious they take a bullshit case all the way to to SCOTUS.
I have my own ideas of what's going on here, the absolutely impossible never ever happens evil to even think it possibility.
A lot of this rides on people here assuming the first grand jury was racist or tribal.
You fuck off.
I can't believe that LB, UMC New York lawyer, says well if the poor black kid in rural Texas facing 20-to-life, took a plea bargain, he has to be GUILTY GUILTY.
57: And your disbelief, unlike most of your other opinions, is fully justified.
No, obviously better to assume that the second Grand Jury was racist or "tribal." Based on no additional knowledge of either jury or trial.
I should probably google up some other accounts, but the NAACP's justification for its stance in this case seems rather arbitrary.
I still don't see how a kid who has to take a plea bargain is a kid who can make the school put him back on the team.
Most or all high schools require athletes to keep their grades above a certain level to stay on the team, right? I'm sure that gets fudged out the wazoo, but it's still a principle that their conduct has to be exemplary, not just non-criminal. So misdemeanor sexual assault is apparently less serious than an F.
60:How? The town, the school officials, and most likely the prosecutor didn't think he did it. He probably didn't "make" the school do anything.
the prosecutor fails to get his "ham sandwich" the first time through, which means a major witness was not credible on the stand could mean any number of things.
Further to 59, I mean, I know about the history of rape allegations, the spectre of the black rapist, and their use in organizing/justifying lynchings, and especially with athletes who were previously on a track to glory, I can see some rallying around them, trying to get them back on that track. The NAACP chapter's justification, however, was just that the first grand jury hadn't returned an indictment, so this one was clearly suspiscious, not anything about this case that would explain a flase charge.
62: Being caught at a party where alcohol was served would have been enough to get you thrown out of sports for a while at my school. (I suppose that would apply to her as well has him.) They actually tossed people off student council for this. Being arrested, unless the charges are actually dropped, is also grounds.
(I don't think he made the school do anything either. The point that I have been making is that the school is run by assholes and that this is aside from the boy's legal issues.)
59:No, obviously better to assume that the second Grand Jury was racist or "tribal." Based on no additional knowledge of either jury or trial.
We have this.
42:
they also sued the D.A. on a 14th Amendment claim, predicated in part on his failure to get an indictment when he brought the case before a mixed-race jury, despite allegedly having suggested that a mixed-race jury would not indict a couple of black kids.
So was the 2nd grand jury all-white, and that is the one we are supposed to trust (in rural Texas, black defendant, etc...very etc)?
So misdemeanor sexual assault is apparently less serious than an F. This cuts to the heart of the matter. Even if he didn't rape her, he pled guilty to sexually assaulting her. Those adults surrounding her were harrassing her. I don't think this was a 1st amendment case, but a case of the officials of school making a school activity impossibly hostile to her in a way that would not have been possible were she not a woman and an official, legally endorsed victim of sexual assault.
They are fucking shitheads who should be kicked out of the field of education.
The girl and her family are so intensely litigious they take a bullshit case all the way to to SCOTUS.
Interpretations abound. Their determination could come from not getting justice for a rape; it wouldn't be the first time a rapist wasn't convicted. But what do I know?
fudged out the wazoo
Ew.
60: Just to clarify, he didn't get put back on the team after taking a plea bargain. According to the complaint, after the cheerleader accused the two of rape (in Oct. 08), they were moved to a different school (there was a restraining order prohibiting them from coming w/in 1200 feet of her) and removed from the football team. It was only after the grand jury refused to indict (in Jan. 09) that they came back to the school, and to the basketball team. The game at issue was in Feb. 09. The indictment by the second grand jury was was in Nov. 09, and the plea in Oct. 10 (by which time both had graduated).
(Note: not suggesting the school handled this correctly--clearly it didn't, there's just no reason to do what they did to the cheerleader even if they were convinced to a certainty the basketball player was innocent, and certainly failure to get an indictment is not in itself any reason to be convinced of that.)
Jasper is indeed notoriously racist. Probably there are many layers in which the school admin is behaving horribly.
42, 'suing the DA for using a mixed-race grand jury" leads me to believe that is entirely possible that the defendant knew he would be facing an all-white trial jury and 20-life.
I'd plead in a heartbeat.
certainly failure to get an indictment is not in itself
things might be deduced from the failure to get an indictment, and the plea-bargain down to a misdemeanor.
Like lack of physical evidence and witnesses
he pled guilty to sexually assaulting her
Misdemeanor sexual assault covers a LOT of ground from consensual sex between two people on either side of the consent age line to grabbing somebody's butt to exposing yourself.
Again, I'm not trying to defend the player; I don't have any idea what happened, or even what their respective stories on the event were. But there are an awful lot of assumptions in this thread based on missing details.
Note: not suggesting the school handled this correctly--clearly it didn't, there's just no reason to do what they did to the cheerleader even if they were convinced to a certainty the basketball player was innocent
Doesn't seem crazy to expect that if you want to be a cheerleader you're required to actually cheer for the teams. From that timeline it's not clear to me at all that the school did anything wrong here.
75: On that timeline (and without additional info), I don't think the school was unreasonable for letting the guy play on the team at that point. But allowing the cheerleader to abstain from a small fraction of her duties seems like a more than reasonable accommodation under circumstances like this. It's not like she was refusing to cheer for the team, she just didn't want to cheer for the guy who she said raped her.
Like lack of physical evidence and witnesses
Which is typical. I've known at least a dozen women who have been raped—which is to say, I know of the rapes of at least a dozen women I've known; there are undoubtedly others I don't know about—but I don't know anyone whose rapist was subsequently caught, charged and convicted. So I'm generally inclined to believe that an accuser is not guilty of making a false accusation, which is after all a pretty public deal when you take it that far. The school may not have done anything legally wrong, but I can't see that they haven't done something wrong.
So I'm generally inclined to believe that an accuser is not guilty of making a false accusation
So am I, and than goodness we have additional data and evidence in this case, the 1st failed indictment, like her and her family demanding an all-white jury (does anyone want to defend this?), the plea-bargain, the reaction of the school officials.
I do not let even my very strong presumptions lead me to ignoring facts in particular cases.
||
I just got an email from someone who isn't a native speaker of English describing something as being "in the desi/rable balltrac/k."
|>
But allowing the cheerleader to abstain from a small fraction of her duties seems like a more than reasonable accommodation under circumstances like this.
Maybe. It's hard for me to make this call. It probably was a pretty public thing and I can see how the school wouldn't want the whole thing perpetuated via her conducting her own private protest and giving the guy the stinkeye all game every game.
I don't know anyone whose rapist was subsequently caught, charged and convicted. So I'm generally inclined to believe that an accuser is not guilty of making a false accusation
Likely you're talking about sane people though. Crazies and sociopaths make this whole thing a lot more fraught from the enforcement side.
80: Sure, I can see how the school wouldn't want that. But tough shit. They're dealing with a student who claimed to have been raped. That's kind of a big deal, and barring some very, very good reason to think she was outright lying about it, they should have accommodated her. Get rid of cheers for individual players altogether if having her remain silent for a few cheers per game is so intolerable.
The school might have totally fucked this up. But I haven't read any account that wasn't basically as told by the girl and her lawyer and it gives me pause.
Get rid of cheers for individual players altogether if having her remain silent for a few cheers per game is so intolerable.
This. She was willing to cheer for the team, after all.
Or at least get rid of the cheer mentioned in 44.
I just got an email from someone who isn't a native speaker of English describing something as being "in the desi/rable balltrac/k."
You should let them know that the standard phrase is "dogs in a bathtub".
Just to clarify, he didn't get put back on the team after taking a plea bargain. According to the complaint, after the cheerleader accused the two of rape (in Oct. 08), they were moved to a different school (there was a restraining order prohibiting them from coming w/in 1200 feet of her) and removed from the football team. It was only after the grand jury refused to indict (in Jan. 09) that they came back to the school, and to the basketball team. The game at issue was in Feb. 09. The indictment by the second grand jury was was in Nov. 09, and the plea in Oct. 10 (by which time both had graduated).
(Note: not suggesting the school handled this correctly--clearly it didn't, there's just no reason to do what they did to the cheerleader even if they were convinced to a certainty the basketball player was innocent, and certainly failure to get an indictment is not in itself any reason to be convinced of that.)
Timelines are really important. I think I mostly agree with these comments.
In Virginia, rape is 5 to life. It is very difficult to turn down a plea bargain for a misdemeanor with no jail time. Even if the evidence is overwhemingly on your side, it takes a lot of bravery to face Virginia jury or a Texas jury instead of pleading.
Or incorporate the cheer mentioned in 21.
89: "Ten" rhymes with "in" in for most people in East Texas. In fact I used ten/tin like marry/Mary/merry when I was down there, most folks did not even hear the difference.
... and on preview I see that Bave clearly lied about the "interminable" test.
89: I thought so too, at first, but then remembered I've known people who thought it was very exotic that "pin" and "pen" sound quite different when I say them.
I've ranted before (not here, I don't think) about how annoying it is when cheerleading squads only cheer for the boys' teams, but I'd not really thought about how common it must be for them to have to cheer for rapists. Ugh.
Interminable test still in progress. Plus studying for two others, plus supposedly writing a paper.
These legal threads are helpful, though. I've got a Crim exam on Monday.
92: i'm pretty sure cheerleading is not a sport under title IX.
I'd not really thought about how common it must be for them to have to cheer for rapists.
Huh, I hadn't thought of that. She's already qualified to cheer for the NFL.
But there are an awful lot of assumptions in this thread based on missing details.
Comity!
94: I'm not going to bother looking it up, but I know some schools have separated their cheerleading sport teams that compete at cheer competitions from the squads that actually cheer at games. I just meant that allocation of cheerleaders is one more place where men's sports tend to be prioritized over women's sports, which only matters to me on principle because I don't particularly enjoy sports.
Unrelated to all that, when Lee was in high school she was outed during her senior year when someone saw her with her girlfriend and her b-ball teammates took a secret vote to decide whether to kick her off the team because her conduct made them so uncomfortable and threatened the good name of the team. They decided she could stay, but she became a pariah after having been very popular as a star athlete. If she'd been dropped from the team, her college scholarships would have disappeared too. This was a long time ago and I'm not sure whether the school would have enforced the team's decision, though the coaches apparently were fine with either outcome. I just always think about that and how upsetting and hurtful it is to her even now whenever the topic of kicking people off teams comes up.
20: The whole high school sports culture thing in the US is completely pathological, it should just be abolished.
I'm beginning to come to this view. For a non-trivial percentage of boys in high-school sports it comes with an added dollop of inculcation into a culture of sexual disrespect. As an example: for one sport at my high school the two coaches when I was there and the one following all were involved in sexual improprieties which included sex with minors. Two of the three were very "successful" when measured by fielding winning teams. All three were hardly shy about sharing their views on women in general (one designated one disfavored team member as "woman of the week") and sex in front of the team (excluding the actual illegal stuff, of course). All three ultimately came to grief, but the "successful" ones only after years, and in the last case only after he got totally out of control (he had very good teams). Decades ago, so the baseline has shifted, but my anecdotal observations of the current HS athletic environment indicate that a similar attitude still exists.
78: like her and her family demanding an all-white jury (does anyone want to defend this?)
Nope, and it's not an accurate portrayal of what happened. The DA initially refused to even try to get an indictment (i.e. basically told the girl to go home and suck it up), claiming that a mixed-race jury wouldn't indict, which is a horribly racist statement in the first place (because those black people would never believe that a black boy raped a white girl!). The family fought to force the DA to try for an indictment (which took two tries, which is not unheard of). Then, the DA made comments about the girl and the facts of the case in public, which is what the claim against the DA was about. That claim was thrown out because the Court found that there is no constitutionally protected interest in not being stigmatized.
I agree with 76. While the school was probably, technically, within its rights given the timeline, someone really screwed up on basic human decency by not finding a way to accommodate her in advance or turning a blind eye to her on the spot.
About Supreme Court decisions that suck in general, in a vacuum they rarely bother me. I'm not a lawyer, and the SC's job can plausibly be interpreted as a very narrow mandate to judge laws and lower courts' rulings against solely the Constitution (and previous precedent and all that), not things like cruelty. Sometimes government is supposed to be dispassionate. A lot of the Constitution really is very minimalist and federalist, including the First Amendment. Does someone, regardless of what they'd say or do, have a Constitutional right to be on the cheerleading team? If not, then what is the First Amendment claim here? Cheerleaders can be thrown off the team for bad grades, getting into fights, and a whole bunch of other stuff that have nothing to do with cheerleading, so it would honestly be kind of baffling if she couldn't be thrown off for refusing to cheer. Maybe that just means that her lawyer should have made a different argument, and I could definitely believe that, but the SC has no way to tell people to start over and do something differently except by telling them "no".
The problem with that, the really infuriating thing, is that the SC is so often the last resort, especially for liberal and/or left-wing causes. What's going to happen now is that H.S.'s family is going to pay the school district $45,000 for court costs and/or file for bankruptcy. That's it. Barring some magical compassion-growing on the part of every single adult in the school district, there is no better alternative. Even if this case weren't such a political minefield, Congress wouldn't do anything for one cheerleader and ex post facto law does nothing to help people who have already been the victim of this kind of thing. I don't have any particular problem with the SC interpreting its powers as minimally as possible, but some group on its level really needs to do more to remedy injustice, and I'm not seeing any other volunteers.
100:I'm tired of stuff like 42 and 100.
Does anybody have any freaking links? I am fine with opposing accounts, sourced, but not with "GMcGrumps" claiming the definitive version.
Oh, and I know it's fun, and lurkers assume it is housestyle to mash the troll, but 100 should look to 42.
102: I will point out that you have no link for 'demanding an all-white jury'. It's a deduction you made with very little basis, and not directly supported by anything I've seen.
104:see 42 I know who "potchkeh" is even if he didn't source it. I have quoted him repeatedly.
42:
*In addition to suing the school on 1st Amendment grounds and a bunch of other stuff, they also sued the D.A. on a 14th Amendment claim, predicated in part on his failure to get an indictment when he brought the case before a mixed-race jury, despite allegedly having suggested that a mixed-race jury would not indict a couple of black kids.
"Sued for bringing the case before a mixed-race [grand] jury" doesn't even feel like an interpretation, it is in the text.
Of course, maybe the plaintiff wanted an all-black grand jury.
Question:I think Grand Juries are awful.
Could a D.A. tell a grand jury in secret session:"C'mon, these people keep suing me. If you give me an indictment, I'll promise the kid won't do any time and won't have his life destroyed?"
Is this legal?
102, 103, 105: Bob, I grabbed some of the case documents off the federal court's online docketing system; you need an account and there are charges to access documents, so I can't give you a link. But what I said in 42 is based on a quick read of the complaint, which by definition is not "the definitive version", it's the plaintiffs' version. And even there I didn't say that they demanded an all-white jury.
I was paraphrasing the complaint's allegations that the D.A. told the victim's father "that although the evidence against Rountree and Bolton was strong and exceeded the requisite requirement for probable cause, the Grand Jury was racially divided and that the black Grand Jurors would not vote to return an indictment against Rountree and Bolton because of the race factor. [The D.A.] said, nevertheless, he would take the matter to the Grand Jury to 'see what happens.'" They further allege that they "wondered why [the D.A.] would even take the case to that existing Grand Jury with the knowledge that they were so racially prejudiced that justice could not be expected or received," and say that they "asked [the D.A.] to postpone presenting the case to the Grand Jury" and offered to hire an investigator on their own dime to develop the case.
And although 100 is right that the 14th amendment claim against the D.A. was largely based on public comments he made, they also allege that the D.A. deprived the victim of "protected liberty interests" by, among other things, "the absence of Grand Jury evidence presented by him . . . to establish probable cause supporting Rountree's and Bolton's being indicted." But I probably overstated things by implying that claim was "predicated in part" specifically on bringing the claim before a mixed-race jury, rather than just on the failure to get an indictment.
(I realize this is all tangential to any real issues, and we're never going to know what actually happened. But I'm under a deadline and thus the procrastination impulse is strong upon me. Happy to email you a copy of the complaint if you like, email me at the linked address.)
Somewhat tangentially to which, I've just had a rather more than usually pointless exchange of views with little Lucretia's school, on the general subject of their policy on acceptable swimming costume designs, specifically whether it made any sense at all given that infants' school children of both sexes occasionally need to visit the lavatory with urgency. You would not have thought it so difficult a task to persuade a professional educator that six-year-old girls do not have breasts.
What's the rule, no two-pieces? Because they have those tankinis now, that seem as if they should satisfy the most unreasonably modest school dress-code.
Yes. Specifically none of those. Which was itself IMO a fairly moronic compromise on our part from the sensible starting point, which is that there is no reason at all on God's green earth to require six year old boys and six year old girls to wear different swimming costumes.
Specifically none of those.
Specifically no two-pieces or specifically no tankinis?
Specifically only one-piece swimsuits, where "one piece swimsuits" means "six year old sized versions of adult women's one piece swimsuits". Perhaps one of the poor little Muslim girls is going to get a burkini foisted on her, at which point presumably it will all blow up and get in the papers, but so far no luck.
Put her in one of these. They'll change the policy after 1 swim. Or all the teachers will quit...
I guess technically that's not a one-piece swimsuit. I still want to make fun of it though.
It would seem to defeat the original object of providing the lass with something comfortable and practical to swim in though.
110: Good Christ yes. Fortunately there's only a couple of years when managing a one-piece in the bathroom by themselves is difficult, but Jesus, people, what is your problem?
It's not practical to learn to swim in a dress?
115- I was imagining that it would be so inconvenient for the teachers to deal with that they would be very chagrined and revise their rules and then everyone would swim happily ever after. The impracticality of it would just be like a rhetorical stance to make a point.
six-year-old girls do not have breasts.
With Monsanto around, maybe the school is just playing it safe.
OT by now, but I read the beginning of the thread, regarding the US Supreme Court, before I started skimming the rest.
Randall Kennedy had this piece in the New Republic not long ago: Justices Ginsberg and Breyer should retire, now, in essence in order to allow time for replacements to be made under Obama's watch.
I found it persuasive, and just something I hadn't thought about.
My daughter has a tankini now. A one piece is a nightmare to get off and one with any speed.
Somewhat related, a pox on people who use the family bathroom for their same sex child. My daughter is too old to go in the men's room and I can't go in the ladies.
So you bastards stay out.
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Earlier I was going to presidential and explain 4, but then I got distracted. Too late!
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|| So I go to fill a prescription today for a new (to me) med aimed at treating what might be migraines, might be some weird seizure thingy, definitive imaging studies to follow. (Nothing meriting concern.) When I go to pick it up, the pharmacist tells me she can't dispense the medication until she hears back from the prescribing doctor because there is an interaction with the Nuvaring. Okay. What's the interaction? It might reduce the effectiveness of the bc. I'm still boggling. "We can try calling..." Uh, yeah, do that. It's after 5, answering service. Pharmacist is at a loss as to what she can do.
"So, you're saying the only concern whatsoever is that it could reduce the effectiveness of the Nuvaring?"
"Yes."
She gets my best are-you-fucking-stupid? glare. "So... I can use an alternative form of contraception! I am an adult!"
"Oh!" It's like she's having an epiphany. "Okay, I can go ahead and fill that then."
Arghghghghg! I am tempted to snark that it is much easier to avoid having sex than to avoid having a seizure, but since the latter isn't really likely in any genuinely severe sort of way, I just grumble to myself. And now to you.|>
109: "Tankini" conjures up in my mind images like this:
http://www.google.com/m/search?site=images&source=mog&hl=en&gl=us&client=ms-android-verizon&q=victorian%20bathing%20machine%20beach#i=30
Earlier I was going to presidential and explain 4, but then I got distracted. Too late!
After the other thread, I'm thinking that sort of comment shouldn't be presidential, but should come from BU's Provost.
Do you use dead presidents because you don't want to be masturbated to ? Otherwise, use future presidents.
126: cut me some slack -- i had a tough day.
Facebook's "People You May Know" feature is amusing me. It used to just present me with random old acquaintances I didn't really want to friend, but now it's mostly people I've never heard of mixed in with random semi-famous people. Maybe you know... Lawrence Lessig? Matthew Yglesias? Sean Parker?
I've known at least a dozen women who have been raped--which is to say, I know of the rapes of at least a dozen women I've known; there are undoubtedly others I don't know about--but I don't know anyone whose rapist was subsequently caught, charged and convicted. So I'm generally inclined to believe that an accuser is not guilty of making a false accusation
there's no contradiction between a lot of rapes going unreported and a fair number of false rape accusations being made. The difficulty of applying criminal law standards to a particularly fraught area of private life can help explain both.
124: As a sufferer from a sort of seizure like thingy I extend my sympathies. They can be distressing, annoying, and kind of frightening. Best of luck.
But allowing the cheerleader to abstain from a small fraction of her duties seems like a more than reasonable accommodation under circumstances like this. It's not like she was refusing to cheer for the team, she just didn't want to cheer for the guy who she said raped her.
This. This, this, this. Maybe some of you disagree with things like allowing (turban-wearing) Sikhs an exemption from the normal uniform of the Mounties, but it strikes me as both obviously correct and an apt comparison. Indeed, being a cheerleader in a Texas public school is probably even more of a symbolic public role than being a Mountie, and thus one where one ought to be particularly soliticious about shutting people out for reasons of sincere conscience, etc.
It's making the family pay court costs that's particularly egregious, in my mind.
One thing I like about the German constitutional court is that there isn't any bullshit about a discretionary docket. Either a complaint is valid, or it isn't. Perhaps substantively, getting told "the lower court didn't go so wrong that we need to step in" isn't any better than "we're not taking your case, and that's all we're telling you", but, I dunno, it seems to have a less arbitrary feel to it.
By the way, if you happen to be near Karlsruhe, and there's an oral argument happening at the Bundesverfassungsgericht--it doesn't happen often; procedure is almost exclusively written (Clarence Thomas would love it)--I do recommend stopping by. The judges wear very pretty scarlet robes (which contrast nicely with the wood paneling and German eagle behind them), and the building is quite nice--nothing fancy from outside, but the hearing room has floor-to-ceiling glass walls on two sides, flooding it with light, which creates a very pleasant impression of public business being done in a open and transparent fashion.
Which reminds me -- you said something about being in town this week? Next week? and I forgot about it. Am I remembering that right, and is anyone up for a meetup?
Yeah, from tomorrow noon--I really need to start packing--till Monday morning; then SF indefinitely.
Speaking of which—togolosh? clew? Cecily? Are any of you coming out for the centennial reunion hoopla?
138: not this year. Next is my 20th reunion so I'll likely be out there if I can. I may be out there before then, but I don't yet know.
122: AT my YMCA children under 18 are not allowed in the women's locker room. I think that they have a separate girls' locker room.